The Augusta Courier

Labor Unions Fighting Over Underworld Concessions
Dynamite One Anothers Homes In Relentless Battle

Gambling Rights, Liquor Concessions And Racing Rackets Cause Of Bitter War

The evidence of racketeering among labor unions continues to pile up.

The newspapers have recently carried a story of a strike which is now in progress and which has been in progress at a Joppa, Illinois steam electric power plant.

It seems that this power plant is across the river from the Paducah Atomic Energy Plant and will be tied in with the atomic energy operations plant in some way.

The real issue is whether the foremen belonging to a local union will be permitted to operate crap games, horse books, whisky rackets and other concessions on the job.

The statement as to the issue comes from the International Officers of the AF of L Iron Workers International and it does not come from anti-labor people.

Local No. 595 of the AF of L. Iron Workers Union of Paducah, Kentucky claims the right to operate gambling, whisky and other rackets on the job and when they were denied this right, they struck.

Therefore, the International organized Local No. 758 at Cairo, Illinois in opposition to Local No. 595.

Members belonging to both the Paducah and Cairo Unions are at work on the Joppa plant.

And as usual the members of the union are resorting to dynamite. They are dynamiting one another's homes.

In this case the fight is between two local unions. The home of the Business Agent of one of the unions has been dynamited and the dynamite was hurled from a moving automobile just like the dynamite was thrown in Augusta.

They are following approved union techniques and union habits.

A few days ago the Paducah union called out all of its men and established picket lines again.

When they did this Ray Armstrong, organizer for the Cairo union, said his men would not attempt to pass the pickets of the Paducah union because "that would mean bloodshed."

So, in this case, you have two unions dynamiting one another and one union afraid to cross the picket lines of the other because they know they will get killed if they do.

And all this is over who will control and operate the crap games, the horse race books, the whisky racket and the other rackets which can be saddled around the necks of the innocent workers at these plants.

And while all of this goes on over the control of the rackets, the union members suffer and the contractor who is building

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Gambling Rights, Liquor Concessions And Racing Rackets Cause Of Bitter War

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the electric plant must remain idle and the completion of the construction of the atomic energy plant at Paducah, Kentucky is further delayed.

This is a fair example of what happens in highly unionized communities and this is what happens when the racketeers get control of the unions.

Here the fight is between the unions, yet the whole nation suffers.

Here the fight is between the leaders of competing unions and the members of both unions are out of work.

Here the issue between the unions is over the control of gambling and the sale of whisky.

This is a fair sample of what is happening and will happen as the union leaders become stronger and more arrogant.

Yet, when any person raises his voice against this type of racketeer and against the cutthroats and murderers engaged in violence in time of strike he is considered to be anti-labor.

On the contrary, those who fight racketeering union leaders and racketeering unions are making the real fight for the working man in this nation.

Certainly the working man has some rights and the nation has some rights.

But to guarantee these rights to the worker and to the individual, it is going to take staunch regulation of the union racketeer.

No wonder the unions are turning to communism.

Here at the Paducah plant two thousand men stand idle while union racketeers fight over the control of gambling and whisky and things of that kind.

It is a sad and sordid story out of the lives of the American people.